At Long Last! My MPL collection is Super-Complete again

Back in 2009-2010 I sold my MS Lincoln set and decided to build a set of matte proofs. It took a while, but eventually the “Matt’s Mattes” set was completed. This was back during the MPL mania, and in short order I started getting offers for my coins that I couldn’t refuse. To top it off, I bought a house (the one I’m still living in) in early 2012 and sold the VDB to help finance the loan. With that, my set plummeted to the bottom of the set registry pile and never recovered… until now! Earlier this year I was able to acquire Larry Shapiro’s VDB in 66RB, and at the same show, Max Brand walked up to me with a 1916 MPL I used to own and I bought that too. I did manage to hang onto a couple of coins from my old set, so all I needed was 1909, 1910, and a 1914 to complete it. Since all my other mattes had CAC, that became a requirement. The other requirement was that they be great.

Having decided to go ahead and wait to find the right examples, the search was hard. In the end, one of the easiest dates, 1910, was the only one remaining. There were plenty of CAC’d examples in 66, but none had that special something I was looking for, so I waited.

Well I guess it was fate. Richard Shapiro for some unknown reason listed his entire collection of MPLs and other “stuff” in the FUN auction this month. All the MPL weenies stood up and paid attention, myself included. Frankly, any of his coins would be a feather in the cap for a collection of Mattes and I went after several. In the end, I took six. First came the 1910 in 67RB CAC. I was outbid on at least four others that I really wanted. Two were actually mine before, the 1910 in 67BN, and the 1914 in 66(+?)BN. The other two were the Liston 1915 and 1916, both in their green holders from the Liston sale. Had I known that I would continue to be outbid on several other lots coming later, I would have been more aggressive. Oh well.

But wait! There’s more! For some crazy reason Heritage put a few of my faves from his “Monster-Toned” set in the last auction of the week. I decided to go after five of them and set a budget: $25k for all five. When the auction came, I was ready. It was thrilling and over in minutes. I literally just kept hitting the bid button over and over again, yelling “stop!” at the computer screen every time I bid until it was over. With BP, my total came in at $24,720! Whew!

So without further ado, here they are together for the first time for all to see. I will continue to try and make improvements wherever possible, quite likely occupying a small part of my mind until I am no longer.

Enjoy!